Sleep, Perchance To....Sleep.

Well, I'm wide awake right now.

I've got an early morning shift tomorrow, but for the life of me I have no interest in going to bed. If I fail to take my sleeping medication, the prospect of sleep is entirely uninviting. Sleep feels like a colossal waste of time to me. Not to say that I don't enjoy dreaming, and if I could assure that I would dream I might be more keen on sleeping. As it stands now, however I find sleep to just take up hours upon hours of my life that could be better spent doing anything else. This includes, but is not limited to: eating, watching TV, playing a game, going for a drive, tidying up my room, laughing at the idea of me tidying up my room, writing more blog posts, eating more, etc.

Some people look forward to when they get to go home, curl up in bed and go to sleep. Not me though. I always lay in bed and think to myself, "What else could I be doing now?" The problem is that this begins to cycle in my head and sleep becomes a futile pursuit and I begin to do whatever it is I thought about doing in the first place. I think a large part of this stems from something psychological, but the other part of it is that I worry about not having enough time to do things.

Studies have been done for decades about how much we sleep, and the percentage of our life we spend with our eyes closed, unconscious. It's generally pretty staggering how much of our lives we devote to not living them. I've gone as many as three days without sleep before, back when I wasn't working. I would spend this time doing any number of frivolous things. These things were important to me at the time I did them, but I can say that looking back they were fairly moot.

I found myself panicked this afternoon while driving to work. I think about where my life and the lives of those around me are heading and I can't help but feel like I've fallen behind. Many of my friends are either finished college/university or are well on there way to finishing. Some of them are moving out, moving in with their significant other, already live with their significant other, having kids, and moving out of the city. I've commented before on this matter, but it really started to get me worked up today. I worry that by the time I've finished all the tasks required to start an adult life I'll be too old to begin the things that my friends are doing now. This is probably part of the reason I've moved out twice before, only to come home again. I want to be out in the world, I want to have the experiences that make me mature as an individual. I'm not content to be twenty four and just entering college. That's not to say I'm malcontent with college in general; I am looking forward to the experience very much.

I just don't want to be thirty years old, not be in the career of my choice, living alone.